


Sunset Lullaby

by Nightsidesamurai



Category: Bruce Banner - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Natasha Romanov - Fandom, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk - All Media Types
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 05:59:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3885049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightsidesamurai/pseuds/Nightsidesamurai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Black Widow finds herself behind enemy lines and becoming increasingly hopeless when a familiar green face shows up to provide assistance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunset Lullaby

**Author's Note:**

> My own bit of headcanon to explain where their "lullaby" phrase came from.

Explosions filled Natasha's view as Hydra rockets slammed into the path ahead of her, bringing a deluge of rocks and dirt into her way. She was barely able to leap out of way, rolling into the underbrush and slinking away from the soldiers wielding the wildly inaccurate but deadly weapons. She crouched immobile among the rough brush trying to catch her breath and formulate a plan. This was supposed to be a simple scouting mission, a quick peek into a secret Hydra base that might contain some information about the scepter they so desperately needed to recover. What she had found instead was a battalion of well trained agents bristling with experimental weapons and armor. 

The scientists at Hydra had obviously been inspired by Tony Stark's Iron Man suits and had heaped several weapon systems on to a mobile frame operated by a a two man team inside a metal shell. While not as elegant or efficient as Stark's suits, she had to admit that they did the job. She didn't have the weaponry to do enough to the machines and while she was definitely more agile, they just didn't stop coming after her. She was lucky enough to have image blurring technology built into her suit so that their scanners couldn't quite pinpoint her (she'd have to begrudgingly thank Tony for that later) but she was still stuck in rough country with no supplies and with no allies close enough to help her. She heard the distinctive whir and stomp of the oncoming machines and she did the only thing she could; run.

\-------------------------------------

Bruce Banner was bored. A mind like his was never really satisfied with stillness and the constant buzzing of ideas and problems was usually a source of pleasure to him. He could always count on the well of ideas to give him something to do but today he was undeniably bored. It might have something to do with his friends and team mates all being occupied with other things, far too occupied to discuss anything with the deceptively meek scientist. Tony was off working on some other humanitarian venture, curing Australia of cane toads or something, Thor was in Asgard being a beloved and muscular prince of gods, Steve and Clint were off once again proving who was best at launching unconventional projectiles at things, and Natasha was on another secret mission.

Bruce had found himself more and more enamored with the mysterious assassin turned hero but he couldn't quite put his finger on why. Something in the way she looked at him made him think that she, more than any of his other friends, understood his daily struggle. Even after they had seen the swath of destruction he had caused in New York, they didn't know that he was fighting that fight over and over again every second of every day. Unlike the huge techno-dragon monster he had punched out of the sky, the beast in his belly couldn't be beaten into submission, only caged through an extreme effort of will. This fight, the one to not become the monster he loathed, was the one he truly cared about. He dreaded every moment on a mission where he waited in the jet, listening for the call for "Code Green" and unleashing the monster.

It didn't happen often, but each time it was more and more difficult to close off the torrent of rage that fueled the Hulk. Each time he reverted back to meek and gentle Bruce Banner, he expected to see the wreckage of what the green bastard had demolished. Instead he found himself receiving the accolades of his friends, praising him for the violence he had inflicted on the world around him. He was a man of science, a worshiper at the temple of the mind, but he often felt like he was most valued for what he could destroy instead of what he could create.

He was getting ready to get up and stop moping when a console near him started pinging a faint signal. The rhythmic sound barely registered on the computers around him, indicating how weak the signal was in the first place. There was no one else to check on the message and Bruce found himself staring at a communications panel that looked ripped out of a 60's spy movie. "Jarvis can you tell me what that noise is? It's coming from this old panel and I don't really know what to make of it". Jarvis, represented by a glowing orange sphere, materialized nearby and replied, "It seems to be Morse code Dr. Banner. It's an S.O.S. coming from a heavily forested region in Eastern Europe". Banner thought for a moment and he was filled with dread as he asked a question he was sure he knew the answer to, "Where was Natasha going on mission?"

\-------------------------------------

The light was steadily dimming around Natasha as she used several pieces of incompatible technology to scratch a rhythm out with a sparking wire and a metal plate. The signal for help wouldn't go very far, it had barely any range and not enough of power to last very long but she knew that an old SHIELD satellite would be going roughly over her position and if she was lucky it would catch enough of the signal to send help. She hadn't seen or heard from the lumbering death machines in more than 30 minutes and she knew that her window for sending the message for help was vanishingly small. She had to move her position soon or they would catch her calling for help and send everything they could at her location, hoping to overwhelm her with pure force that she couldn't evade or trick. 

She'd managed to get one of machines to chase after her and get stuck in a barely visible crevasse but she couldn't count on the rest of them being so clumsy with their maneuvering. At this pace there wouldn't be enough forest left for her to hide in if she kept running around in circles. Then her choices would become very limited. She knew things that even those in the Avengers didn't know, couldn't know, and while she was resistant to torture as part of her training, she knew that Hydra would be inventive in extracting information from her. In that case it might be preferable to deny them the chance that they'd get something out of her before they killed her. She was prepared to make that choice but now that she was making friends and feeling like a part of something, she had much more to lose if she had to end it.

Natasha would cross that bridge when she got to it but for now she would keep moving away from the facility where the weapons platforms had been constructed. She didn't get very far before more miniature rockets rained down on the spot she'd been tucked in sending her message. Any closer and she would have been singed by the burning debris flying outwards from the gaping wound in the earth. She turned and ran, her legs burning with the exertion, she didn't have food or water but she would run until she dropped. It was her job after all and she'd been trained to finish the job above all else. The exhaustion must have made her sloppy or maybe the operator in the machine was a fresh soldier as opposed to the tired guys chasing her earlier but she danced left when she should have gone right and that ended it right there. What felt like a bolt of lightning slashed through her leg and dropped her writhing to the ground unable to stand again immediately. She looked down at her leg and saw burned flesh, the material of her suit melted to her skin, and spasmodic twitching as the lingering aftereffects of the weapon made her nerves dance. She could barely sit up and breathing felt like she was inhaling fire and the stomping of the weapon platforms was getting louder and closer. Escape wasn't an option and she knew what she had to do.

Her pistol seemed to leap into her hand and she licked her lips as she cocked it into readiness. Natasha took one last look around her, trying to set the memory of this once pristine place into her mind, trying to find something happy to take with her as she left this world. She didn't have a chance to even lift the weapon as a savage bass yell echo through the forest and an earth shaking boom sent an explosion of fire lancing into the sky. The torso and legs of one of the machines sailed out of the trees overhead and landed with crunch out of her sight. The pilots followed closely behind, bending around trees as they were hurled like nothing more than a child's toy. The Hulk stomped out of the trees, shouldering aside a hundred years of growth as casually as pushing aside a stack of papers. While his constant anger was plain on his face Natasha saw Bruce's pain in the Hulk's eyes, pain she understood intimately. He had heard her signal and come for her, Bruce had risked letting the beast loose to get her to safety. Or at least she hoped it was safety, Bruce had always fought to put the big green genie back into the bottle after he let it out and she needed the mind behind the monster to formulate an escape plan.

A chill ran through her body and she noticed the sun beginning the fall below the horizon. She grunted with the exertion pulling herself to her feet and reached an ungloved hand out to the grunting green monster standing a few yards away. "Hey big guy, sun's getting real low".


End file.
